10 more trends in consumer behaviour for 2016 (part two)

Our aim in this post is to help you find out how technology can help create new market segments and reach users with interests in common.

5. Digital goes human

Advances in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data now offer us countless ways of making instant connections with our audiences.

Users now think nothing of demanding personalized experiences from their favourite brands, as is only right given the large volume of information they now have access to. How can we satisfy their needs?

We can talk to our audience and really listen to them so our digital content and brands provide a genuinely human response to what they are telling us.

Or we can use buy buttons and other agile and mobile-friendly methods such as Twitter Cards to encourage social commerce.

And we can focus on the most important thing of all: trying our best to understand what our consumers really want.

6. Control freaks

First seen in the health and fitness sectors where they have already proved to be highly appreciated by users, interest in tracking devices just goes on growing

With recent advances in wearable technology we can expect devices to have an increasing number of sensors.

Brands have a choice of two broad approaches:

Track and share for sport and leisure

Track and win for health and wellness

7. Bleisure

The more connected we are, the more blurred the line between work and leisure.

But there are two sides to having to work from home, on the go, or from one’s mobile. How can we take advantage of the flip side?

Bleisure is the blending of the terms business and pleasure.

Internally, by giving employees the chance to gain holidays or other benefits if they have to travel for work.

Externally, by listening to customers so we can offer them bleisure services tailored to their needs.

8. Koodies

It’s no secret that haute cuisine has arrived in our homes, but what we didn’t see coming was that kids have turned out to be gourmets as well.

A Koodie is a child who is involved in buying the ingredients and in preparing the food.

This trend also shows us how children are becoming increasingly involved in brand decisions:

We can test out young audiences with targeted advertising. An example would be IKEA’s use of children in the kitchen pages of its catalogues.

10. Pet-friendly

With the rise of social media and the sharing economy, there are a number of niche groups which are expected to take off.

In recent years, for example, we have seen almost exponential growth in people’s appreciation of pets.

The acceptance of pets in all spheres of human life is already almost total.

In Barcelona, for example, animals are allowed on the underground….if they pay for their ticket, that is!

We need to take a stand in favour of animals and offer content for animal lovers.

And communicate to this segment with attitudes which back up our values and mission.

Our move into the digital world has reached a stage where we need to shake things up if we are to make the difficult but necessary changes. This is a crucial time for staking out the ground we wish our brands to occupy.